Rosie Allen - BTEC Acting
Rehearsal Log 1
Monday 15/9/14
Today, in order to further our understanding of theatre for children, we explored the concept of endowing an inanimate object with ‘human’ characteristics to bring it to life. We began by using breath and focus to explore the different ways we could manipulate a rolled-up ball of newspaper so that it appeared to be a living, breathing being. Through experimentation, I soon realised that something as simple as giving an object a pulse and breath, along with the total commitment of the puppeteer to what they’re doing, can be hugely effective in terms of an audience’s perspective as it is engaging visually and adds another layer of sensory interest, which, I think, is especially important when devising a piece of theatre for young children.
We were then instructed to get an object of our own (mine was a scarf) and to spend some time individually how we can use the physical characteristics of that object to bring it to life. For example, by nature, a scarf is long and fluid, so I utilised this quality and made this fluidity a key element of its movement. Initially, I found it challenging to completely commit to what I was doing, but I definitely found that, once I got into it properly, it became much easier, demonstrating how, in order for the audience to believe, the actors onstage need to believe just as much.
The next stage in this exercise was to get into groups of three and unite our objects to form one puppet with three key components: a head (with sound), a body (with a pulse/breath) and legs to provide the movement. For me, personally, this was the most challenging activity so far as we not only had to navigate our way around the foreign concept of puppetry, but also had to use communication skills to maintain a tight focus and circle of attention with the other people in the group to keep the puppet together and keep it looking realistic for the audience.
The final thing we did in this lesson was, in groups, making a humanoid puppet out of newspaper with a head, arms, a body and legs. We then had to work in our groups to give it a voice, breath and movement quality to make it as realistic as possible, bearing in mind things such as transfer of weight when sitting/standing, which is something humans do automatically that we don’t necessarily think about consciously on a day-to-day basis.
Rehearsal Log 2
Friday 19/9/14
Today our lesson focused on various drama-based improvisation games in order to not only create a child-like atmosphere, but also to identify key skills that an actor needs when devising a piece of theatre for a target audience of young children.
We played a game called ‘Cat and Mouse’ where two blindfolded volunteers stood in the centre of the circle, one as the ‘cat’ with a newspaper baton, chasing the ‘mouse’ (the other volunteer). The fact that both people were blindfolded made it incredibly funny to watch as an observer due to the exaggerated physical movements they were both making to compensate for one of their primary senses being obscured. This principle could be very effective in a piece of theatre and I, personally, have seen examples of this in the farcical, slapstick chases between the ‘baddie’ and the ‘goodie’ in pantomime, an important form of theatre for children in today’s society.
We also played a memory game where we sat in a circle and began with the phrase “I’m going on a bear hunt and I’m going to take...” with each person having to repeat all of the items already said as well as adding their own onto the end of the list. This seemingly childish game actually required a lot of focus, concentration and teamwork as the overall communication ability of the group was really tested.
The final game involved one ‘storyteller’ and several other volunteers standing behind them. I was the storyteller and had to improvise a simple storyline whilst the other people mimed it as I went along. Initially, I felt under pressure to come up with a story that would provide the comedy that was at the centre of this exercise, but eventually I realised that the comedy came naturally as I went along and the story got more and more ludicrous. For example, when talking about a conversation between a witch and a princess in my story, I switched the focus between the two characters very rapidly so that the people miming my story were forced to switch very quickly between physicalities which provided a great amount of physical and visual comedy. In addition to this, several times, I had to repeat something in a very insistent way if the ‘mimes’ weren’t quite fast enough to keep up with my story and this, again, made the audience really laugh to the extent that I feel that this principle would potentially be a good starting point for when we start devising our own piece of theatre for assessment at the end of this unit.
Rehearsal Log 4
Monday 29/9/14
Today, to begin with, we looked at fables and morals (particularly the famous stories by Aesop) and looked at how we could incorporate them into a piece of theatre for children.
We were divided into two groups and each group was given a fable to stage within the proxemic confines of a ‘stage’ that was an incredibly small square (see photos below). This presented many challenges for my group, who were given ‘The Hare and the Tortoise’ as our fable. For example, the main setting of the story is on a track during a race between the two title characters, which was very difficult to effectively convey on such a small performance area. As a group, we collectively came to the decision to have the two people playing the hare and the tortoise ‘running’ on the spot in one fixed position to create the illusion of travelling a large distance. We also made use of rhyme and physical comedy to tell the story, and these features of the piece were noted by our audience as being visually and aurally engaging and, thanks to this feedback, we can bear these in mind as effective theatrical devices when devising our final piece for the assessment for this unit.
Overall, I really enjoyed the challenge of having such a small space to stage a story on, as it helped us to stay true to the story and to be as detailed, simple and precise as possible, which is of the utmost importance when performing for young children as their attention can wander and we want to make sure our target audience is engaged throughout.
Rehearsal Log 3
Friday 26/9/14
Today the focus of our lesson was puns and jokes which, in the context of theatre for children, can be very effective in engaging our target audience and maintaining their attention throughout the performance.
We got into pairs and devised a short scene involving one or more puns. For example:
“You can borrow my calculator, I find that it’s always something to count on”
After watching each other’s scenes, we observed as a group that the most effective ways of including a pun in a scene are to either slip it in subtly or, at the other extreme, to pause after the punchline and wait for the audience’s reaction, almost breaking the fourth wall to include the audience in the performance.
I personally feel that the idea of puns and other jokes is something we can definitely include in our performance for this unit, as it is a highly effective way of getting and maintaining the audience’s attention, especially given that the age of our target audience means that the focus and attention may be prone to wander from time to time if we don’t keep them engaged using different methods such as puns throughout the performance.
Rehearsal Log 5
Friday 3/10/14
Today, in our groups, we continued to develop our pieces (see script below). When considering staging and proxemics, we realised that - bearing in mind the young age of our target audience - we needed to make our piece as visually and aurally engaging as possible. To achieve this, we used theatrical devices such as cannon, unison and rhyme to create a performance that will engage young children as the variety of different theatrical devices used means that their attention will not wander during the performance. In terms of visual interest, we added certain elements into our piece such as synchronised movement, varied levels and heightened gestures in order to secure the attention of our audience.
Rehearsal Log 6
Friday 10/10/14
Today we continued to rehearse and refine our pieces from last week, bearing in mind the feedback we got last week. My group concentrated on making our gestures and physicality as precise and as 'tight' as possible so that we can hold the attention of our target audience who, given their age, will probably have very short attention spans. For this reason, our piece needs to be to-the-point so that the children don't get bored or confused, making them lose focus.
Rehearsal Log 7
Monday 13/10/14
Today, the focus of our lesson was to think about what sort of topics would be relevant to our target audience of primary school children. Some of the ideas we came up with were:
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Bullying
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Peer pressure
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Lying to get attention
Upon further discussion, we found that, as a group, we could relate to a lot of these topics and were able to think of a lot of examples that relate to these three themes from our own experience of primary school. We were then put into two groups and were given the task of taking one of these themes and devise a short scene, using this idea as a foundation for a moral of the story (following on from the lesson we did on morals and fables). However, we soon realised that, in this context, the broad, overarching morals of the fables we looked at in that lesson weren't as effective as using small, everyday occurences as opposed to fantastical stories that the children might not be able to relate to.
My group were given the theme of 'lying to get attention' and devised a scene (video below). The feedback we got from the other half of the class was very positive overral. Our audience liked the use of humour and everyday scenarios that are accessible for children to convey the moral message and the fact that our characters were distinctive enough to be interesting and entertaining, but also true to life so that the children can identify characteristics that they recognise within the performance. The non-patronising way we conveyed the moral was also commented upon, along with the fact that the element of audience participation was very engaging from an audience point of view.
The things we could improve on include making the piece clearer as a whole so that the children don't get confused about what's going on. Keeping things as simple as possible with specific, clear gestures and vocal techniques is something that we will need to bear in mind when devising our final performance for assessment for this unit.
Rehearsal Log 8
Monday 10/11/14
Before half term, we were all instructed to write a short monologue from the perspective of a child about our dreams and ambitions for what we wanted to be when we grew up. Today, having presented our monologues to each other in Friday's lesson, we got into groups with other people whose monologues linked to our own in some way. For example, Justice and I immediately identified a link between our pieces - hers was about being an archaeologist and mine about being an explorer. Both concern adventures and exciting discoveries which I feel would really engage and captivate our target audience as they would be able to relate to these themes in some way, either being inspired by the content, recognising their own ambitions and dreams in the piece or relating them to something they read in a story book or saw on TV or in a film.
We also joined up with Charlotte and Morgie who wanted to be a farmer and a snowman. We thought about places where we could cross-cut between them and eventually ended up with a complete script encompassing all four of our monologues in small sections to create an engaging and enthralling piece of theatre for children.
Once we had completed the script, we thought about potential ways in which we could stage the piece, using various theatrical techniques to make it visually and aurally engaging, such as repetition, mime, levels, soundscapes and caricatures. For example, when I say at the end of my monologue,"my dad says it's for his job," Justice and Charlotte adopt the stereotypical physical and vocal characeristics of a father and a child as Justice repeats, "it's for my job."
Personally, I found it incredibly beneficial to get the piece up on its feet and start linking the elements together that we had previously been working on in smaller groups. We drew upon techniques that we had learnt in other acting classes that we thought would be engaging and appropriate for our target audience such as audience participation and interaction, mime, song and slapstick comedy, all of which will keep the audience involved throughout the piece as children have a limited attention span, meaning that it will be more of a challenge
EVALUATION
Over the course of this unit, I personally feel that I learned a lot about the medium of theatre for children in terms of suitable performance material for a young target audience. We underwent a series of incredibly fascinating workshop sessions involving a wide variety of exercises that enabled us as a company to collectively enhance our knowledge and understanding of this form of theatre. We explored a wide range of stimuli and activities, all including a sense of play that is an integral part of theatre for children. In the performance itself, I felt that it was, overall, successful due to a number of factors.
As the devising process progressed towards our final piece, we strived to add as much variety as possible to ensure that the audience remained engaged throughout the performance, as the attention spans of young children are comparatively short. One particular example of this was a last-minute addition to the piece, in which Becca and I came onstage and performed a short scene whilst ‘waiting for the train’ that included relevant jokes and puns. I personally felt that the piece needed to be broken up a bit more as going straight from Justice’s journey to school rhyme into Kai’s imagination song and then Recess and When I Grow Up was slightly too intense and high energy and needed to have a lull somewhere in the middle to add dynamics and variety to the piece as a whole. In the scene that I wrote and added for this moment, I thought back to the various workshops that we took part in during this unit for inspiration for a potential scene to add to the piece.
Becca and I both agreed that using puns would be effective in maintaining the audience’s interest and enabling both us and the audience to mentally take a break from the high-energy songs and rhymes that make up a lot of the piece. In terms of scripting this section, we realised that many of the puns that we came up with in that particular workshop were a bit too sophisticated for our target audience of five and six-year-olds, so we had to devise new ones and ensure that they were simplistic enough for the children to understand and appreciate. In addition to this, we also had to ensure that our delivery was clear and bold in order to convey the punchline and, in the final performance, this worked incredibly well in terms of grabbing the audience’s attention with a new kind of scene and the response was very positive in this particular section of the piece.
After the performance, we had the opportunity to speak to the children about the moments they enjoyed the most, and I personally found this feedback incredibly interesting in relation to the material that we had devised. One common response was Kai’s imagination song, especially the bit about the animals that he finds during his adventure in the jungle. I think that the combination of dance and singing to the tune of a well-known pop song as well as strong visual aids such as the animal masks, blue sheet to represent the sea and brightly coloured steering wheel for the polka dot van really helped to engage the audience on many levels and was the reason why this stood out to them as a highlight of the performance. I believe that it was also a good idea to bring back these ideas at the end of the piece to create a cohesive structure in which the children had the opportunity to interact with us and reflect upon the piece as a whole. Getting them involved with the movements and sounds of each animal was really effective as it created a rapport between the actors and the audience that is incredibly important in theatre for children, as they respond well to being included in such an exciting event as a performance.
Another effective aspect of the piece was the morals that we included, which stemmed from the workshop we did on retelling famous fables in a small stage area, but we manipulated this concept and changed it so that it was relevant for our target audience of year one students, who might not necessarily know these fables. Instead, we simplified the lessons we taught in the piece, such as the zebra crossing scene and the repeated instruction to ‘look left, look right, look left again’ in order to cross the road safely. I believe that we managed to deliver this lesson in a way that was not patronising or belittling and thus intertwined with the rest of the piece in a highly effective, relevant and suitable manner.
I think that, overall, we achieved our aim: a varied piece of theatre for children that encompassed many of the elements we have collected over the workshops we participated in over the course of this unit. The combination of dance, singing and acting engaged the children on auditory, visual and emotional levels and I found it to be an incredibly enjoyable challenge to adapt and simplify the content we had created in order for the piece to be suitable for our target audience of five-year-olds.